As his luna, I knew I could help him heal and find peace and, with each mile Wyatt drove, I became more and more determined to do so.
Whether he hated me or not.
23: A Little History
~Six months ago: January 21~
Ash
"Mate," Landry Benson murmured and his nostrils flared as his eyes scanned the cafeteria.
"Who is it? Who?" I demanded as I looked up from my sandwich. "Who?!"
"Dang, Ash, you sound like a freaking owl." Wyatt laughed and jabbed an elbow in my ribs.
Of course, I retaliated and punched his shoulder, which knocked him out of his seat. He got up and grinned in challenge, ready to wrestle, but Landry suddenly stood up and took off toward the doors at the front of the room, and we both turned our attention back to him.
We were almost as excited as he was for him to find his mate. I was going to be eighteen next week and Wyatt in April, and then my brothers and I could look for our special girl.
Sid squealed with delight at the thought, and I rolled my eyes.
As Landry jogged away, I used my height to peer over everyone's head and saw three girls standing by the doors. Two were humans happily talking to each other, but the third was Nia freaking Hashimoto, who strutted in by herself with a smirk on her lips.
Oh, Moon Goddess, please let it be one of the human girls, I begged.Even as complicated as that can be, anyone is better thanher.
There weren't many good things to say about Nia Hashimoto. She got into a lot of trouble, then used her father's name to get out of it. Yuki Hashimoto had been Uncle Jay's beta, and a good one, too. His daughter, instead of living up to his respected name, dragged it through the mud.
She'd never had any boyfriend for longer than a week and even then cheated on him while they were together. Sure, lots of unmated shifters chose to play around until they found their mates, but wolves valued loyalty above all else, and that was what they expected from their partners. Needless to say, once the males of the pack caught on to her constant infidelity, they had little interest in anything she had to offer. Even the man whores, who went through girls like toilet paper, were faithful to the one they were with at the time.
Realizing the pack males were a lost cause, Nia targeted the human males at school. She broke up countless couples and even cost a teacher his job two years ago when she accused him of seducing her. Mase had investigated, found she was lying, and cleared Mr. Liberman's name, but his reputation in the community would never be the same. Mr. Liberman ended up moving to the other side of the country, and we'd paid for his moving expenses out of our own money.
Her offenses weren't all centered around her libido. She bilked an elder of the pack out of thousands with a fundraising scam, then stole a couple of credit cards from a human's wallet at Roger's Diner and maxed them out.
Mase ordered her to pay back every cent through community service, which resulted in evenmoredrama. He assigned her to the orphanage because he thought she could handle working with kids. Sadly, she discovered that Tyler James, who was only fifteen at the time, lived there. On the last day of her sentence, she stayed after clocking out and snuck into his room. When he came home from football practice, he found her lying naked on his bed and was so upset and horrified, he ran away. Dad found him sleeping at the Busted Knuckle the next morning and made Ty tell him everything. Furious, Dad personally dragged Nia to the alpha offices for my brothers to issue consequences.
"Although disgusting and immoral, two-timing isn't a crime," Mase growled, "but having sex before you're an adult at eighteenis, according to werewolf law. After that debacle with Mr. Liberman, you were already treading on thin ice. Now you tried to seduce a fifteen-year-old kid!"
"We only gave you this many chances out of respect to your father and his years of service," Cole added. "But this is your last warning. Screw up again and you're gone, no matter who your daddy is."
As for Landry, he couldn't have been more opposite of Nia. Like me and my brothers, he had decided he wanted to wait for his Goddess-giving mate to experience all of his firsts with. He wouldn't have been upset if his mate hadn't waited for him, since that was a personal decision. However, your mate was supposed to be your perfect complement, so of course he hoped she saved some firsts only for him, and Nia Hashimoto had no firsts left to give anybody.
That issue aside, he was also going to have to overlook her stealing and other wrongdoings as well as what she'd done to him last fall.
Right before Thanksgiving, she decided she wanted him and harassed him day after day to go out with her. He was polite at first with his refusal, which was more thanIwould have been, but she became more and more aggressive as he continued to turn her down. When her "affection" turned to fury, she made his life miserable until Wyatt and I went against Landry's wishes and intervened. We told her to leave him alone or we'd tell Mase, Cole, and Jay some of the things they didn't know about yet, and that calmed her ass down.
And now Wyatt and I could only watch with dismay bubbling in our guts as Landry went right to Nia and came to a dead stop in front of her. He smiled down at her, and she smiled back.
Really?I sighed.I mean, really?
Not good, Ashy,Sid muttered.
Well, hell, Wyatt and Granite grunted in unison before Wyatt continued.If it wouldn't be blasphemy, I'd say the Mood Goddess was drunk on this one.
We may not like her,I told him, but it looks like Landry's stuck with her, so we are, too.
But now we have to be nice to the bitch.
She could change for her mate,I said without any real conviction.